


The Witch and the Wolf

by Lobo_Loca



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers for Crooked Kingdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8323828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobo_Loca/pseuds/Lobo_Loca
Summary: Spoilers for Crooked Kingdom.
Nina returns with Matthias to Fjerda, and picks up another grumpy wolf on the way. She just hopes this one comes with manners.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kurochatchan (RhienMeoita)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhienMeoita/gifts).



> For Zen, because not only did she get me into this series, she shared her copy of Crooked Kingdom which inspired me to write this, beta'd this fic, AND made [an edit](http://kurochatchan.tumblr.com/post/152034192989/an-edit-for-lobolocas-wonderful-the-witch-and) and a header for this fic (which I'm still kinda freaking out about because I didn't expect it at all).
> 
> This was also supposed to be just a quick 300 word tumblr ficlet, but that obviously didn't work out very well.

 

Finding a ship from Ravka to Fjerda is impossible, and would be foolhardy to try, which leaves attempting to cross into Fjerda by land.

Nina cannot contain her excitement at the prospect of dragging a giant Fjerdan all by her lonesome across a border teeming with Fjerdans who would happily fill her with holes. Or deliver her into the hands of Jarl Braum.

On the middle finger of her right glove, Nina clumsily sews a tiny pocket for the little poison tablet the Grisha girl in Ketterdam had given her all those months ago.

Zoya and Genya attempt to dissuade her at every turn, but Nina refuses to budge. She will return Matthias to the ice or die trying.

                                                                                  

Supplies are not easy to acquire quickly in Os Alta, even for someone with Nina’s new means. She leaves Matthias in a cold room at the Grisha barracks while she goes to the marketplace and haggles. It takes a few days, but she finds a good warm, white coat: a snug white hat that she can fit all her hair under; a white scarf; a small metal kettle; a singular pan; a camp; several blankets; two oilcloth tarps; several meters of rope; two wooden poles; wooden stakes; a small hammer; snowshoes; white gloves; a lantern oil; a map and compass; a flint; a smaller sled for rent; and several weeks’ worth of trail rations. Firewood she’ll collect near the border.

The sled isn’t large enough for both the supplies and Matthias, so Nina hires a dog sled to haul her, Matthias, and the supplies to just inside the border.

Pavel, the sled driver, is a sweet boy, a few years older, and spends the first week torn between flushing red at the mere sight of her or bumbling his way through what he probably means to be flirting.

Nina has a vague idea to flirt back, just a little spot of fun. But then she’ll see Matthias where he’s wrapped in a white sheet and tied to the rented sled, and any urge for fun drains away.

It doesn’t take long for Pavel to notice, and for the flirting to be replaced by sympathetic glances.

One night, as Pavel extinguishes the campfire and Nina says goodnight to Matthias, Pavel turns and asks, “Was he your husband?”

Nina takes a moment to think fondly of the dark crimson shade Matthias would’ve turned at the question, if he was able. The moment passes too quickly, and she’s forced to think of her answer.

Which is, technically, no.

There hadn’t been enough time, and while Matthias may’ve been loosening up a little under her ministrations, he would’ve insisted on a very long Fjerdan courtship—probably so that he could’ve decided who to ask for her hands, the barbarian—before he even considered proposing. They had been newly lovers before, allies while enemies and allies and enemies before that; a tangled knot of relationships and cultural clashes that Nina didn’t have the words to describe.

She smiles at Pavel, wistful and sad, saying, “Almost.”

Pavel frowns when they stop two kilometers or so from the Fjerdan border, near the western edge of the permafrost, and goes to unhitch Nina’s rented sled from the dogsled.

“I will go with you,” he insisted, hitching Nina’s sled back to the dogsled.

Nina snorts, pats his cheek, and unhitches her sled. “No, Pavel. It’s sweet of you offer—if somewhat condescending—but this? Is something I will alone.”

He narrows his eyes at her, as if he might actually argue, but something in her face convinces him it’s not worth the energy to try.

“Come see me when you’re done,” Pavel says, “so I know the barbarians didn’t get you.”

Nina huffs. “Unlikely. But maybe when I get back I’ll let you take me out for blini. As friends.”

“More friends are always good,” Pavel says, grinning and holding out his hand.

Nina smiles and shakes his hand.

                                                                                   

Nina realizes quickly that her plan to haul a giant Fjerdan and a few weeks worth of supplies through the snow and across the Fjerdan border until she finds a nice spot is perhaps a little too ambitious for just one Grisha on her own.

A kilometer, maybe two, into Fjerda, she stops to catch her breath, hands on her knees, chest heaving, arms aching.

She wants to regret turning down Pavel’s offer. She does, for a moment. But it doesn’t feel right for someone who doesn‘t—didn’t—know Matthias to return him to the ice he came from. He hadn’t been fond of strangers in life, and she hardly thinks he would’ve wanted to be laid to rest with the help of one.

Which isn’t true really. He wouldn’t have minded if Nina needs someone to help her with this. But she wants to do this herself. This one last thing for Matthias, for her, for them.

Nina straightens, then grabs the shovel from the sled and walks a few meters out.

The spot isn’t ideal, out in the open with the nearest tree several meters away and nothing to mark it, but it will have to do.

She starts shoveling.

She shovels snow, then hits hard frozen ground.

She shovels at the ground, which amounts to chipping away frozen dirt with bone-jarring thuds and praying the shovel doesn’t break.

The grave is barely a dent in the ground when Nina hears the first crunch of snow. She tightens her grip on the shovel and turns. At first, there doesn’t seem to be anything, just the endless stretch of snow. Then, Nina hears the growling.

A white wolf—bigger than Nina’s ever seen, meaner than Nina’s ever seen—stalks closer.

The sled, and Matthias, sits between them.

Nina raises the shovel, yelling at the wolf, “I don’t care if you’re sacred to the _drüskelle_ , if you even think about eating him, I will kill you and skin you and wear you as a shawl!”

The wolf’s growling grows angrier as it prowls closer. Nina curses and starts forward.

The growling cuts off as the wolf sniffs at Matthias, turning to a whine as it nudges him with its snout.

Nina stops, shovel raised over her head. She isn’t so sure what’s going anymore. The wolf doesn’t seem about to eat Matthias, at the very least. More like it’s almost trying to wake him up.

After a moment, the wolf gives up and turns to Nina, snarling.

There is a scar on its face running down and across its muzzle. Like it had been slashed by a broken bottle.

“Trass?” Nina whispers.

The wolf stops, growl quieting, ears swiveling.

Nina feels tears prick at her eyes as she speaks softly in Fjerdan, “You’re Trassel, aren’t you. Matthias’ troublemaker.”

Trass slinks around the sled, ears flattening back and teeth bared. Nina stands very still.

“He told me about you. About how the _drüskelle_ turned you out after they declared him dead.”

Trass snaps at her, and Nina struggles not to flinch.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I took him from you, but I’m not sorry I had him with me, even if he’s dead because of me.”

Nina has a split second to brace herself before Trass lunges.

She brings up her arms to protect her face and throat, careful not to hit Trass with the shovel, and Trass latches on to her left forearm. Trass’ momentum forces Nina onto her back in the snow, and she holds very still.

Her coat, sweater, and long-sleeved shirt take the brunt of Trass’ teeth, but Nina can feel them scraping and cutting into the skin of her arm. Trass doesn’t shake her, just stares and growls as her blood slowly turns the white of her coat and his muzzle red.

The snow, combined with the sweat from grave-digging and hauling the sled as well as the wind, chills Nina quickly, despite the heat from Trass on top of her. She starts to shiver first, which aggravates the wounds where Trass’ teeth dig into her skin. Her teeth start to chatter shortly afterwards.

Nina knows she has to move soon or risk losing something to frostbite.

She braces herself to move. Hurting Trass isn’t something she wants to do, but she’s not about to let herself die either. Trass must feel her tense, but instead of biting down harder or shaking, he lets go. Nina doesn’t relax, more than prepared to hit him with the shovel if he goes in for another bite, but he doesn’t.

Licking at the wounds once, then twice, Trass meets her gaze briefly before turning his head and nimbly jumping off of her.

Nina lies in the snow for several heartbeats before Trass nudges off her hat with his snout. She snorts, which turns into a laugh, and descends rather quickly into barely contained hysteria.

She tries not to think too hard about the fact that she might be the only Grisha to have faced down a _drüskelle_ wolf and lived.

Trass noses at her neck and huffs. Nina gently pushes his muzzle away with her hand and sits up. She flexes her left arm, wincing, and grabs her hat.

Grave-digging is going to have to wait.

Trass watches as Nina slowly clears an area of snow and constructs the tent, whining whenever something makes her breath hitch little. Once the tent is up, Nina digs out the blankets from the sled. First one goes flat on the floor. The other five she dumps in a heap, and her clothes in a neat pile to the side. The boxes of rations take four trips and by the time the last box is in the tent, Nina’s given up trying to do anything with her left arm except hold it mostly still. The lantern goes on top of the rations. Nina grabs the sack of badges and disinfectants last, all but collapsing into the heap of blankets.

She lays there for a moment, exhausted, before going back to tie the tent flaps closed. Trass has finally moved from his spot, now stretched out beside the sled with his bloody muzzle propped up on Matthias’ chest. He doesn’t spare her more than a glance before going back to his vigil. Nina ties the flaps closed, shucks her boots and snowshoes, and retreats to her heap of blankets.

Removing her torn layers is slow going, but Nina peels them all off one by one except for her thin undershirt. Shivering, she pulls the small jar of disinfecting ointment out of the slack, carefully smearing it over the small punctures in her forearm before wrapping her forearm in a length of bandage. She carefully pulls on new shirt and sweater before inspecting the sleeve of her coat.

The blood has turned rusted in color and is mostly dry or frozen. Nina doesn’t bother to try cleaning it off before she sets to work sewing up the tears. The stitches are lumpy and uneven, but they hold the tears closed passably well.

Nina sets the coat aside and burrows under her blankets to sleep.

                                                                                    

Nina wakes with the sun, still tired, but forces herself up. She eats a breakfast of dry salty jerky and a mix of dried berries, nuts, and stale crackers before pulling on her boots and snowshoes.

Trass is still there, muzzle no longer bloody, but he otherwise seems the same with his head resting over Matthias’ still heart.

Nina clears a small hole in the snow and makes a small fire. She packs snow into the kettle and sets it in the fire before picking up the shovel again.

Snow has accumulated in the grave dent overnight. Nina shovels it away before chipping at the ground again.

After a few minutes, the kettle starts rocking as the water boils, and Nina quickly pulls it out of the fire before it starts whistling. She pours some of the water into the tin cup, letting it warm her gloves while it cools enough to drink.

Trass, Nina’s surprised to find when she glances back at the sled, is gone, leaving only a faint trail of pawprints heading off to the east.

She supposes it’s childish and foolhardy to expect he’d stick around at all, least of all until Matthias is buried. She may be a bit lonely, after all that time spent with the Crows in Ketterdam, then Genya and Zoya on the ship to Ravka, and her Grisha friends in Os Alta. Now, Nina’s only company is a corpse who won’t talk back.

Draining the first cup of water, Nina pours a second and stares at the slightly bigger grave dent. She’s not making good progress. The longer she stays the more likely some Fjerdan is to stumble over her and the thinner her supplies will grow. She needs to work faster. However, the ground isn’t about to cooperate and she’s not sure how to soften it.

The first sip of the second cup burns her tongue. Cursing, Nina jerks the cup of way, spilling steaming hot water on the snow and the ground. The snow melts in puffs of steam and the ground—the ground loses its top coat of ice in patches. Nina pokes the closet patch with her shovel. The dirt gives way easily for a few centimeters.

She eyes her cup and walks over to the grave dent. She dumps the remainder of the water over the grave dent. The ground turns a deeper brown and loses that icy edge of rigidity. Nina sets her cup aside, trying the shovel the dirt. It sinks through the top layer of soil easily for a few centimeters before meeting any resistance.

Cheering quietly, Nina starts digging. Several minutes later, the grave dent is nearly twice its length and half again as deep but the ground has firmed up again, a little harder than it had been before. Nina grabs her kettle from by the fire, pours more hot water, and continues digging.

The water’s gone cold by the time the ground’s frozen over again. Nina adds more snow to the kettle, adds some more wood to the fire, and waits for the water to heat again before going back to digging.

                                                                                     

Sometime later, at least a few hours judging by the movement of the sun, the grave is long enough to fit Matthias and about halfway to knee deep. Nina sets the shovel aside, wiping the icy sweat from her brow. At this rate, she might be able to finish digging tomorrow morning and be ready to leave by the afternoon.

But first: Lunch.

Nina debates between pickled herring with noodles and pickled eggs with noodles as she heads for the tent. A flash of movement out of the corner of her eyes and Nina turns, hand falling to the knife strapped to her thigh.

Trass, at least Nina thinks it’s Trass, trots toward her with what appears to be an elk haunch in his jaws.  He stops a few meters from her, drops the haunch, lays beside the sled, and sets his bloody muzzle back on Matthias’ chest. Nina stares at the haunch then at Trass for a long moment. The haunch barely and sluggishly bleeds onto the snow, small little drops turning the snow more pink than red. Shredded strings of meat or tendon, perhaps both, hang off the ends as well as shreds of hide.

Nina thinks it might be meant as a peace offering. An apology even.

And there really isn’t any good reason to let such a gift go to waste, even if Nina would’ve preferred waffles. Or wine. Nina certainly wouldn’t have said no to wine. Or chocolate biscuits. Nina would kill for some chocolate biscuits.

She drags one of the small crates of rations out of the tent and hefts the elk haunch onto it. Skinning, and butchering are not her forte in the least, but there’s a first time for everything.

Nina loses only an hour and a half or so to the haunch, including the time it takes to wrap the extra meat and bones in the paper wrappers from the jerky, burying them in the snow to keep cold, and covering them with an empty rations crate she hadn’t broken down for firewood yet.

She browns some of the meat in the pan, adds some water from the kettle and two handfuls of noodles, and has the results for lunch. It’s not fine dining by any means but it is better than pickled herring or pickled eggs.

The leftover broth from lunch sits to cool some before Nina pours it into a jar that once held pickled herring and buries it next to the meat and bones.

She puts the kettle on the fire and goes back to digging.

As the sun sinks to the horizon, the grave deepens. The walls come up just past Nina’s knees when she stands in it. She pulls the second oilcloth tarp from the sled and secures it over the half-dug grave.

Nina cooks noodles in the thin broth from lunch in the waning light before dousing the fire with half the water left in the kettle. With the other half, she washes out the pan and scrubs her cutlery clean.

She retreats to her tent just before full dark, but can’t sleep just yet. Lighting the lantern, she reads or at least tries. The wind batters at the sides of her tent, whistling and crying in the night as the shadows cast from the lantern dance like living nightmares.

It’s unsettling.

Nina can’t do anything about the wind, but she sets her book aside and puts out the lantern. As she burrows under the blankets, a noise rises above the wind, a low note in some minor key held until breath fails and the sound fades away. After a moment, it comes again from right outside the tent.

_A mourning howl_ , Nina realizes.

The howl tapers out again, and Nina joins in as Trass starts again. Trass’ howl drops out abruptly, but Nina hangs on until there isn’t air left in her lungs.

It seems fitting, somehow, to mourn Matthias this way.

Not the _drüskelle_ way or the Ravkan way, but with the last of Matthias’ kin and in the purest, wildest way possible.

Nina starts the howl again, tears sliding down her cheeks, and, after a few beats, Trass joins in. They continue until Nina’s voice gives out, throat raw. Trass howls once more before silence creeps in.

Even the wind is silent as Nina falls asleep.

In the morning, Nina’s throat is sore, but she feels lighter as she builds the fire. She dumps the bones in the pan with some snow, covers it, and sticks it in the fire to cook. The kettle’s a tight fit and takes a little longer to heat up.

Nina pours her first cup and sticks the cup and the kettle in the snow to cool while she uncovers the grave.

Trass hasn’t moved from where he lays beside Matthias since she got up, but there are faint paw prints and an oblong depression in the snow just outside the tent and a loose circle of prints on the far side of the grave and the tent. As though he spent the night keeping guard.

Sipping at her water, Nina contemplates the puzzle of Trass.

He’s brooding and taciturn, but where Matthias’ motives had been mostly clear, Trass’ are harder to discern, complicated by the uncertainty of his intelligence. He is smarter than a normal wolf of course. The question is by how much?

Matthias had said _drüskelle_ wolves are abandoned to the ice when their human partners die, doomed to isolation as no wild wolves will accept them. Which is barbaric to Nina, but so are many other Fjerdan and _drüskelle_ customs. The _drüskelle_ seem to think their wolves will accept one partner only. However, at their hearts, wolves are pack animals, like humans.

When their families are taken away, they build new ones, even if it takes years and years.

Nina doubts the _drüskelle_ gave the wolves of the fallen any chance to try.

Maybe she and Trass can be the start to proving to the Fjerdans and the _drüskelle_ that they’re not always right. Assuming of course Trass doesn’t wake up one day and eat her face off.

While he looks like the hairiest mournful widow with his head laid on Matthias’ chest, Trass is also about as grumpy as a bear fresh off hibernation, and Nina doesn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.

Nina pours and drinks a second cup of water before stuffing more snow in the kettle and sticking it in the fire beside the pan again. When it starts to rock, she plucks it from the fire and starts digging.

By late morning, the grave’s walls are up to mid-thigh. Nina climbs out of the grave with some difficulty.

Trass lifts his head from Matthias’ chest, ears alert, as she walks over to the sled. She unties the ropes from around Matthias—stops for a moment to brace herself—then rips off the sheet.

It’s been months, but Nina is still struck by how washed out Matthias looks, barely darker than the snow and covered with a thin layer of sparkling ice. He looks like a statue carved from marble with great bunches of corn silk stuck on his head, barely recognizable as the man who once blushed so ruddily for her. Nina can barely stand to look at him, heart squeezing and freezing in her chest.

She closes her eyes and reaches gingerly for that newly familiar cold place. It trickles over her like cold fall rain, goosebumps breaking out over in skin despite the warmth of her coat. Nina opens her eyes as she carefully lifts Matthias into the air, straining against the instinct to push just a little more of that cool power into him.

After that moment on the boat in Ketterdam, Nina can’t stomach the thought of Matthias with those black obsidian eyes.

Trass paces uneasily, ears back and eyes darting from Nina to Matthias as she slowly sends Matthias into his icy grave.

Circling the grave, Trass whines softly. He stops in front of the heap of displaced dirt and starts kicking it over Matthias. Nina inches to the other side of the mound and carefully starts shovels dirt in.

With both of them working, Matthias is completely buried and the grave filled by the early afternoon.

Nina secures the shovels to the sled, then uses her hands to dig up the remaining elk meat. As she uncovers the pan, Trass creeps closer and lies down about a meter from the other side of the fire. Nina tosses the cooked bones to Trass, who either snaps them out of the air or snatches them up from where they land in the snow, before adding the meat to the broth and covering it again.

While the meat thaws and simmers, Nina packs up the tent and loads the sled.

She splits her lunch with Trass, which works out nicely as there’s only so much of the meat her sore throat will tolerate and Trass is mostly uninterested in the broth.

After the pan cools, Nina washes it and packs it on the sled. She eyes Trass thoughtfully as she picks up the sled reins, but shelves the thought of trying to use him as a sled dog almost immediately. For one, Nina’s not great at knots so the makeshift harness would be flimsy at best. For another, she would rather not lose a hand trying to put a harness on Trass.

Of course, that’s assuming Trass will follow Nina, and she’s not about to hold her breath on that.

Nina consults her map and compass for a few moments before she heads back towards the Ravka border. Trass watches her leave, but doesn’t move from beside the campfire ashes.

She supposes that’s answer enough.

                                                                                    

The sled is much lighter without Matthias, and Nina makes it a few kilometers into Ravka before dusk. She makes camp under the shelter of a small clump of trees. Dinner is picked herring and noodles. Nina pokes at it more than eats it. The fresh elk had spoiled her a little, but she also feels a little empty without Matthias nearby. He’d been beside her near constantly these past few months, a familiar pool she seeks out when the world feels too big or she gets lonely.

It’s strange not having it anymore.

But Nina will get used to it in time. Adaptability has always been her greatest strength, and it will not fail her now.

A twig snaps behind her.

Nina grabs the handle of the pan with both hands as she raises it and turns, ignoring the bits of herring and noodles that slide out of the pan into the snow as she does so. A wolf freezes, head down but ears alert and one paw hovering over a broken stick. She’s blocking most of the light from the campfire so she isn’t completely sure, but she thinks it’s Trass.

Lowering the pan slightly, Nina steps to the side. Trass watches her carefully as he creeps forward into the firelight, sniffing at the remains of her dinners before scarfing it up.

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises,” Nina says as she sits down. “I have the feeling you are very similar to Matthias that way. Hopefully you actually come with manners.”

Trass lifts his muzzle from the food dotted snow and cocks his head to the side.

Nina narrows her eyes at him. “I still haven’t forgotten what you did to my arm, you brute. I will be watching you. Just because Matthias loved you doesn’t mean I’ll let you walk all over me.”

The wolf huffs, lowering his muzzle and pawing at the snow. In search of more food, no doubt.

Nina scrubs out her pan, stows it on the sled, and puts out the campfire with the remainder of the kettle before heading to bed. There is a soft uniform crunch of snow outside the tent after she ties the flaps closed. Nina considers opening the flaps and letting Trass in, but she’s still not completely certain he won’t try to rip her throat out in her sleep.

                                                                                     

That sleeping arrangements lasts until a chilling winter storm two nights later.

Nina hears Trass bed down outside, and a few moments later the tent shakes, worse than it did in just the wind. She can’t in good conscience let Trass die out there.

So she opens the tent flaps just a bit and orders, “Trass, get in here before you become the hairiest block of ice outside of Jarl Braum’s bum.”

Trass turns and stares at her, but doesn’t move.

Praying she’s not about to lose a hand, or both, Nina grabs him by the scruff and pulls. Trass allows it, probably too shocked to fight her. They toppled back onto Nina’s heap of blankets with Trass on top and Nina accidentally pinned beneath a very large, very heavy wolf.

Not her best plan to date, but it worked.

Trass scrambles off of her, squashing both her chest and the air out of her lungs on the way, and backs himself into one of the back corners of the tent. His ears are pressed flat and his head lowered, but he doesn’t growl or bare his teeth so he’s not about to rip Nina’s throat out.

Probably.

She slowly grabs half of the blankets and loosely ties the tent flaps closed before retreating to the opposite corner where she curls up to sleep.

Saints, Nina hopes she doesn’t die by trying to save some stubborn wolf from freezing to death.

Waking in the morning borders on unexpected, but the real shock is Trass curled up next to her and blankets draped over them both. He bolts as soon as she twitches, muscling the tent flaps open as he goes, but there is little doubt that he spent at least part of the night draped over her legs if the hairs are any indication.

That night Trass slinks into the tent behind her and curls up in front of the flaps while Nina settles in the middle with her blanket nest. But again come morning, Nina finds him settled at her feet.

The pattern holds until the night before they reach Os Alta.

Nina burrows into her blankets, fussing with the blankets a bit when a warm heavy lump drapes itself over her legs. Trass watches her reaction closely, head pillowed on her thigh just above her knee and tensed to bolt. Nina slowly lies back. She stares at the ceiling, counting her heartbeats until Trass finally relaxes.

Nina’s smiling as she eventually drifts off.

                                                                                 

Once they reach the outskirts of Os Alta, Trass never strays more than an arm’s length from Nina’s side. The feel of Trass brushing against her waist is disconcerting at first. The stares they garter as they walk through the streets are nearly frightening, but Nina holds her head high.

She finds Pavel at the market, and watches with a smirk as he stares at Trass.

“He,” Pavel says after a long moment, nodding at Trass, “is a new addition.”

Trass regards Pavel with deep suspicion, going as far as to put himself between Nina and Pavel, growling quietly all the while.

Nina chuckles, settling a hand lightly between Trass’ shoulders. “It’s amazing what you find out there in the ice.”

Pavel scratches at his head, unable to look away from Trass, saying, “I suppose so.”

Nina can’t wait to introduce Trass to Zoya and Genya if this is the kind of reaction they get.


End file.
